Windows 8 + Synaptics touchpad: touchscreen replacement test

Dan Bowen · Top Commenter
It's funny, it often seems easy to dismiss Microsoft until you recognize their history. Slow to GUI but took over with Windows. Slow to business applications, took over with Office. Slow to Servers, took over with Win Server. Slow to Gaming, XBox 360 is a monster...now we have Phones (btw, love my Mango driven Focus), tablets and a new OS? MS may be slow and clunky out of the chute, but I certainly wouldn't want to be going against them if they decided to put their attention in my space...

Doug Ng
Well stated. I have felt the same way about Windows Phone 7. It's not a matter of if, but when they will start gaining traction in the mobile market. I believe they will do so through their business relations with Enterprise as well as Windows 8 integration hooks. Never count out Microsoft. They are the old guys on the block that are suing everyone for their licensing fees (Android). I think a killer device will be Windows 8 in a tablet form factor with a laptop dock similar to the Transformer. Believe me, it will be hard to beat.

Dan Bowen · Top Commenter
Philip Keighley - wouldn't be surprised to see RIM get acquired by MS for their database...if MS doesn't do it someone will have to in order to slow the death curve. Too much momentum behind Apple, Android and I believe the MS/Nokia move will vault them into a strong 3rd. If my friends & family are any indication, once iPhone users taste Mango they switch fruits.

Jason Anderson · Top Commenter · Deli Associate at Giant food
Windows Phone 7 will not be able to easily catch up with BOTH iOS and Android whom already control more percentage of the market than Windows does for PC's. Even BlackBerry, who used to be the huge enterprise company is slowly losing marketshare.


Thanh Quan · Le Hong Phong High School
It looks fairly complicated...

Nick Fleker Felker · Top Commenter
It looks nice, but I'd prefer an actual mouse on a laptop. Touch gestures are cool, but I want to see where my mouse is.

Guanzhi Ma · Top Commenter · University of Alberta
Did anyone else get the impression of "extremely unpredictable"?

Jason Anderson · Top Commenter · Deli Associate at Giant food
What do you mean?

Guanzhi Ma · Top Commenter · University of Alberta
Jason Anderson I just don't think it is very usable if you have to locate your screen items on your trackpad.

Jason Anderson · Top Commenter · Deli Associate at Giant food
Guanzhi Ma Yeah, you know what. On second watch, I didn't realize she wasn't using a cursor. I can't even stand using Wacom drawing tablets because I find it impossible to "guess" where the coordinates are on screen. I hope W8 has an option to use the mouse on those screens because that's just silly. Everything else is cool because it seems very Lion-like. But not having a cursor is just going to be a no-no. I assume it'll be an option and this is just a "prototype".

Jan Olaf Krems · Top Commenter · Software Engineer (among other things) at Jan O. Krems
Erm, the app switching is nice but the solution of mapping a touchpad directly to the screen. 99% of the video is failing to use their own technology. Hitting random notes? "Works". Drawing your fingers on the screen? "Works". Scrolling a web page? Works - but I guess they didn't show clicking links for a reason. Which leaves only the app switching gesture and no really working multi-touch for desktops (a pinch/rotate gesture where you have to pinch at the right point on the touchpad isn't "working").

Achin Sharma · Top Commenter · Founder & CEO at Achshar
in the end, when it posts "i can't wait to see.." and then fades off to show the status in timeline, it was posted "15 hours ago" instead of "a few second ago".

Dustin Delage
Its a concept video

Achin Sharma · Top Commenter · Founder & CEO at Achshar
Dustin Delage so does that mean they can play with space-time? i say, NO :P

Robert Kegel · Top Commenter · Valencia, California
I was worried about Windows 8 on desktops but after seeing this video I'm starting to think it could be pretty awesome! I'm using the developers preview on my laptop and its ok but using the touchpad (not multi-touch) is kind of a pain, even hook up up a mouse to it doesn't make using the OS that fluid, but seeing this video makes using Windows 8 on a PC nice. I wonder if the multi-touch Logitech touchpad has beta drivers yet for Windows 8? I'd love to try it out and see how it works.

Randall Douglas · Trincity
@ Devin - Windows 8 has a feature that allows you to turn on onscreen feedback when using a dual monitor/touchscreen setup. When this is on, it allows the user touches made on the laptop touchscreen, to be see on the 2nd monitor that mirrors the laptop Metor UI. The touches show as a circle that flashes quickly and then disappears after the finger is lifted, or remains while the finger is still pressing. Perhaps Synatics can utilize this part of the Metro UI?

Jason Anderson · Top Commenter · Deli Associate at Giant food
Looks really good so far. Seems about as responsive as OS X and the Magic Trackpad. This bodes well. It won't make me switch, but it will make using Windows on a Mac much better given the right driver. It looks like Microsoft is taking a really big page from OS X Lion. The fullscreen "app launcher", the switching of fullscreen apps with a gesture (On Windows it looks to be one finger from the edge and OS X it's 3-4 finger swipe.) and some other stuff. The only thing I like that I wish OS X had was the ability to have a second app in "sidebar mode" like Wait. I'd even settle for a third party plugin and library for making compatible apps.

Doug Ng
Looks impressive to me. Actually I will probably only use a fraction of all the gestures shown, but I can easily see a few of them being used by myself frequently when Windows 8 ships. A lot of these gestures are not necessarily revolutionary but are extensions of a tablet or smartphone 'touch' experience extended to a trackpad.

Antonin Devillers · Northeastern
Jitouch http://www.jitouch.com/ remains by FAR the best track pad software!

I bought the license, and I can't do without it now! It's very addictive.. SO many features!

Siddharth Menon · Co-Founder at Borget Solutions
I hope this sees light.... I was once thrilled by Microsoft's Surface show cases, which was way before iPhones. But sadly it always remained inside labs.

Achin Sharma · Top Commenter · Founder & CEO at Achshar
really? i think they have released it to a number of stores.. the surface two kicks ass IMO.

Milad Fathi · Paris Graduate School of Management - Mantissa
That thing is seriously smooth!

Netdirg.com IT Blog
Seriously, I don't know what to think about Win8. So many changes! I have the impression it was only optimised for tablets.

Jason Anderson · Top Commenter · Deli Associate at Giant food
It looks like it'll be good for certain laptops too. Notice how Lion-like the OS seems in that video and how MacBook-like the laptop is. The future looks bright. If I weren't a Mac user I'd probably buy that laptop for Windows 8. Instead I'll just get W8 and install it in BootCamp and hopefully the gestures will work just as well.

Abby Gnanendran · President at Bullz Group International
Jason Anderson You do realize Windows 8 has been in the works long before Lion was released. I know you're trying to make it seem like Windows copied from Lion.

Jason Anderson · Top Commenter · Deli Associate at Giant food
Abby Gnanendran Windows 8 was in the works, but the gestures were not shown off until after Lion was revealed. The above features are brand new and are only performable on a special trackpad, which was undeniably inspired by the Magic Trackpad.

Point of perspective: Android was "in the works" before the iPhone was revealed. But it wasn't until after the iPhone came out that it got its current interface. Before that it was just another BlackBerry clone. Just because an OS was in the works (Or shown off as Android's BB-style UI was) before another one doesn't mean it was first to do a certain thing.

In fact, when Lion came out, all my Windows friends were like "Why do you need that? What's the point of fullscreen?" Then Windows 8 preview was released. Haven't heard them say a peep since.